Reviews for Ascension : Clubs, Drugs and the Eternal High

The average rating for Ascension : Clubs, Drugs and the Eternal High based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-04-10 00:00:00 Art Doss I'll start this review by saying that, I really hadn't heard of this author until I purchased this book at a used bookstore. I really had no idea what to expect, so I just went with it as read it as it was. As I was live blogging my reviews on things that I found within the book, I actually found that a lot of people knew this author. Not only knew this author, but liked this author. It got me extremely upset, to be frank. Why? That is because if we're giving this poorly researched, poorly addressed, and very bad material to readers and telling them that this is what "real" witches do - then we're just continuing the cycle of misinformation and misunderstanding about what a witch is or what a witch does. It hurts the community more than it helps, and quite frankly, we need to stand up to authors and tell them that we don't appreciate this misguided viewpoints. We need to look at books with a very critical eye and point out issues and problematic behaviors. In general, my overall opinion of this book is that it is another Silver Ravenwolf book wrapped up in a new author, new title, and a new cover. Someone else made that connect as well, again while I was live blogging my review, asking me why I was still reading a Silver Ravenwolf book. Though I will give some level of credit in that this book was punished in 2001, about a year or so after I'd started practicing and looking for information. Much of the information at the time, being spread around on the internet and in various other book sources were really horribly bad. This book, unfortunately, is not an exception. Though out the entire book, there is hypocrisies, misinformation, inaccuracies masquerading as facts, erasure of various groups, and a hell of a lot of problematic behavior. Let's start with just the title in of itself, and what it means and how it's erasing people. By stating that this book is the "REAL" Witches' Handbook, it purports not only that there are REAL (tm) witches, but that there are also FAKE ones. All the fake ones are the ones which do not follow what is listed in the REAL (tm) Witches' Handbook. Except that's not how it works - there is an extremely vague line between what is "real" and what is "fake" in witchcraft, paganism, or the occult. This line is constantly vibrating and moving depending on people's personal perspectives or tastes. In of the title itself, it ERASES all witches who do not follow what is listed in the book as being witches, defining them ultimately as "not real witches" or at least "not witches." Furthermore, it pushes the title of witch on people who may practice these items listed here in the book, but don't consider themselves witches. This is a very important statement, in both the nature of the title of the book and how it interacts the potential audience. According to the title of this book and based on the content of this book, I am not a "real" witch or at least not a witch - which angers me greatly. I say we throw off the title of "real" and "fake" because it's nothing more than an arbitrary social status measuring stick which serves only those out to make themselves "real." Wicca - It's What the Book is Trying to Talk about Some of the major problems in this book is that it constantly equates Witchcraft and the religion Wicca as being the same thing. Firstly, I am aware that this language comes down from Gerald Gardner (who she does have listed in her reading sources) who associated one branch of witchcraft (British Traditional Witchcraft) with all forms of witchcraft. So when he developed the Wicca religion, he used them interchangeably. This just isn't correct or accurate. While I am taking some of the factors in that this was written in the early 2000s, the fact still remains that research had already been out at that time about Cunning Folk and different forms of witchcraft in academic and other sources. It wouldn't have been hard for someone who explicitly discusses using internet resources for connecting to actually you know... check her information out. Let alone any criticisms about Wicca as being the only form of Witchcraft and the only claim to religious or non-religious witchcraft. Before I Go On: allow me to be clear about this topic before I move on, Kate West claims that she was initiated into both a Gardnerian and an Alexanderian coven, saying: "Unable to find other Witches, I self-dedicated and worked Solitary for many years before taking my initiation in both Gardnerian and Alexanderian Craft. ... In all I now have nearly 30 years' Craft experience in nearly all the forms mentioned above..." p. 104. And while it is clear that there is a lot of accurate information about Wicca in this book, there is literally so many things wrong with this book I doubt she has ever been initiated into either. First, allow me to stress this, she claims that an initiation process from the Seeker (which is usually about a year and a day) to the 3rd Degree (which is a full fledge wiccan [ie clergy member/priest/ess of Wicca] who can separate themselves and found their own covens and have the complete Book of Shadows and all the training) takes about three to four years, minimum to a maximum of 20-30 years. For one. Religion's. Initiation. Now I am clear on the topic that one can be initiated into both covens, and I am guessing that she probably spent anywhere from 5-15 years being solitary (it's what I associated the word "many" with) and including her own coven as High Priestess of the Hearth of Hecate [Actually I'm a little unclear if this is the coven she founded, of if she just joined it] that gives her very little time to complete both of these initiation processes. Furthermore, the fact she doesn't even DISCUSS the seeker stage (ie Seeker, 1st Degree, 2nd Degree, 3rd Degree) as part of this whole degree system (though she does vaguely mention some things...?) makes me completely question whether or not she actually has legitimate vettability. Which by the way, she makes absolutely no mention of who it was or whether she can be vetted in either of these two covens, which is pretty easy and quick to actually do for most people who claim to be initiated into either of these two covens. A quick summary for those who have no idea why lineages are so important in Wicca and what the hell vetting is, Gardner originally claimed to have been initiated into this form of British Traditional Witchcraft that he "stumbled" upon (err, the story he gave last I checked was he literally just found them in the woods somewhere in Britain?) which makes him legitimately connected through this lineage to a particular set of British Deities (Lord and Lady of the British Isles, as they are less known and are more accurately described as). This ultimately "made" him viable to create a religion surrounding it. This is how the legitimacy of Wicca is created, through this lineage. Gardner picked up this idea from several different sources including is many claims within various organizations like the Golden Dawn and various other ones he tried to associate with in some manner or form. The point, then, of any other person who joins his religion is to keep the religion done as it is done, ie done correctly in the correct manner or the correct form. This is called an orthopraxic religion where the faith is brought about by action or the doing of things. So to check that you actually were trained in the proper manner and keeping up the right manners of how the religion is being practiced (because CORRECTNESS OF ACTION is important, extremely so) you need to be checked to see that you aren't just some person off the street claiming to be a clergy member of this religion, because you don't have the proper training nor the proper religious mystery instruction to work with the deities through the initiation rite that Gardner picked up from this group way back. So how do you check this thing? Well, you have a vouching system or a vetting system, where the people who initiated you stand up and say "Yup. I did that." And so on and so forth up until the lineage reaches Gardner. Since she completely omits this whole thing out with the entire discussion about initiation and the clergy degrees, I definitely think that this woman is not actually initiated or at least is not a third degree practicer at the minimum. This is just ONE thing, as I mentioned. The timeline that she gives as well as many other things she stated about Wicca and it's preferences and beliefs makes me question whether she didn't just copy the material from the Farrars' Book, The Witches' Bible as well as some of the other books listed here including Gardner's book, The Meaning of Witchcraft (which is one of many of his books on his religion). It's almost how many of the books which were written by various members of the Gardnerian or Alexanderian or other Covens omit things from their books from the past. After all, how can you know to put something like that in if they didn't expose you to it. And this information is not secretive or special information that I had to do anything but ask questions with several Alexanderian and Gardnerians who I have vetted through Amber and Jet, and researched and cross referenced on my own. Feel free to do your own research if you choose to do so. One of the other problems with this book, is that she goes through what a Witch believes (in regards to what a Wiccan believes), which I will get into the erasure of this aspect in another section in a minute. However, allow me to address this specifically. Paraphrasing the words of one of the Alexanderian Elders I know: "Wiccans don't give a flying fuck what you believe. Wicca is about what you do. We don't care about nature as a religious prescription - We don't care about that kind of shit. IF you choose to believe that, then that's for you. Good for you. We only care about HOW it is practiced and making sure that it is still kept to it's true origins. That's what we care about." This is an IMMEDIATE warning flag for me, when I see someone who claims to be initiated into both of these two covens when they start talking about things like "Witches believe in respecting nature" and "karma" and all this other belief related things which have nothing to do with Wicca as a religion. Faith by RIGHT (CORRECT) BELIEF ie Orthodoxy is NOT Wicca. Someone who is initiated into either of these two covens would never have made that assertion that Orthodoxy is important. Furthermore, there is many parts of this book where she obscures or even completely omits the fact that many of the rituals and practices in Wicca actually have a sexual nature to them. Mostly because it is a fertility religion (ie sex is important). I will go over the problematic shit that she tried to cover up and just, everything that's wrong with her whole conversation on fertility in another section because I'm explicitly talking about Wicca here. But don't worry, I have some rants for this stupid shit - it caused me to throw the book violently all over my apartment I was in such a rage over this book's handling of fertility. Anyway, while she does talk about the symbolic reference of the deities having heterosexual sex (chalice and athame), which does happen in various workings. She does not cover the actual sex which happens in some rituals and some covens. She does not cover the Five Fold Kiss, which includes kissing genital. She doesn't include the BDSM-esque rituals which Buckland does in part in his oathbreaking [many wiccans view Buckland as an oathbreaker, and that is why I label him as such] book The Complete Book of Witchcraft (which is not complete and also problematic). She totally ignores the inherent (hetero)sexual nature of this religion minus mentioning it over and over and over again for Beltane as "historically" what happened. It comes as no surprise that someone who is not initiated would gloss over, ignore, or otherwise omit details about the sexual rituals because they don't want to discuss it or because they are totally ignorant of it. There is a reason why, my dear, initiation rites go man -woman or woman-man. Get the picture. I won't rant about my feelings about why and how Gardner set up his religion as an explicitly heterosexual fertility religion. But I definitely have feelings. Furthermore, she basically states in her descriptions of various practices that you can just call yourself whatever you want "Gardnerian Hereditary" which is definitely NOT, NOT a good thing. For many, many reasons. Needless to say, I would very much love to vet Kate West for both of these covens. However, I have a feeling that Kate West is a handle or that she may make the claim that she was initiated by a person who has already passed on. I would not be able to properly vet her as an outsider (though any 3rd Degree Alexanderian/Gardnerian will be able to vet her without any problem), even possibly through Amber and Jet (their resources may not be able to cover them). I have asked for more information about how to do so if Amber and Jet fails to prove me with a vetting, but so far I haven't received any other ways about going about trying to vet her. Short of putting her in a room with two vettable Wiccans to vet her for both, I am very limited in my options of fact checking her claim. Keeping all that in mind, that this book is attempting to describe Wicca as the end all for Witchcraft, and using them interchangeably, I still want to take some of the sentences AS THEY ARE in the writing and explain in my review why they are problematic. So things like this: "Witchcraft is one of the fastest-growing religions in the world," will be addressed as if Witchcraft is not being interchanged with Wicca. Mostly because I know the context of the nature of this book, but the intended target for this book don't. Because this is not EXPLICITLY stated anywhere at all throughout this book, I will be reading it as if I knew "nothing" about the context of this book. -------- Section: Christianity and Persecution It is honestly so damn common that people would sit here and feel the need to discuss this topic. Almost every New Age book I've ever picked up has at some point at least mentioned this whole business with Christianity and how they tortured and killed people. I have some very serious problems with the perpetuation of this conversation within the witchcraft community in the sense that it goes to make the Burning Times and the VICTIMS of the burning times out to be martyrs of the "Witchcraft Faith." So allow me to discuss this at length within the context of this book. This book attempt to homogenize (please look at the "Facts" Section for further discussion on this topic, Quote 1.) all of Europe into the same belief system in order to support the theory that Witchcraft has always existed. But what's even worse is that this book has absolutely no sense of the History that the Early Christian Church. The sentence change is literally three sentences which completely WIPES OUT the history of the Early Christian Church. If you're going to discuss how Europe converted to Christianity (in general) then you need to actually, you know... discuss it. You can't go from Roman Gods were worshipped in temples and then Christianity came in and they were called Devils! Especially since you're totally ignore the FACT that syncretic practices and religions came out of that conversion, especially since syncretic practices are still being practiced TODAY in modern European cultures. It's not a discussion, it's a blatant cover up about what the fuck happened in order to perpetuate a self motivated sense of persecution IN THIS REGARD. Look at what the big bad Christians did in Europe when they became a major power. Bad Christians. Bad. It doesn't discuss anything about how Christianity used those customs of a culture or even the mythos of a culture (For example, I believe there was a story about Paul who went into a temple and asked about an unknown deity altar which was within that temple, and someone said that it was for the "Unknown God" and Paul used that to say that it was his deity (YHVH).) to convert people within that culture. This is just an example of how possibly things went down with how Europe Converted in those EARLY Years. Then she just jumps from the Early Church into the Church of Medieval Europe, going almost immediately talking about the Reformation. Is it possible that the author has absolutely no concept of chronological devices and how things go from one stage to the next. I would really be interested in hearing the explanation of why she didn't bother to cover any of this within her discussion. What, it would be too hard to actually discuss at length what was going on between the interaction of Christianity and these Pagan/natural religions? Then why the fuck is the author trying to discuss it in a couple of paragraphs? What, a glossed over summary is gonna be the best way to discuss this topic? No. It only furthers to perpetuate the bullshit that comes out of people's ideas about what happened and furthers limit the education of what the hell was going on in history at the time. Things, important things, happened. Glossing over them with a bare minimum sentence discussion is not the way to provide any kind of accurate conversation about it. Jesus Christ. ... Well, you know what I mean. Anyway, so this author moves into the INFAMOUS Margret Murray theory that people handed down Witchcraft via word of mouth and it stayed the same for years and year in europe and all the Witches went underground and yadda yadda... yadda. Murray's work is not only highly criticized, but in my opinion - it's also really easy to find exactly where she's jumping to conclusions and making correlations to things that have no basis in fact or proof. She just kind of makes up things and people just accepted it as fact because it was M. Murray who was super famous at the time for being a gift Egyptologist. Except this isn't even in her field (European Customs and Folk Practices) and her research was very shoddy. There were a few who actually came out with several different papers on her work, criticizing her for her poor material and her conclusions which made no sense. Ronald Hutton was one of the main persons who argued against Murray's work, whose field is actually within the scope of Europe and Folk customs. There was an extremely large debate within academia, and I greatly insist that you read her works as well as the criticisms of her works. It's part of the reason why we should push for better authors and better books - researching is important. Having people be checked for things is important. Now before I go any further, I would however, like to discuss some things. I am not saying, and nor implying, that there isn't some level of persecution for those who are practicing witchcraft, paganism, or occultism in the modern world. In fact there is actually quite a bit that we can actually discuss about it without going into the "past" and "trying to find victims to further abuse," like the fact that many in the United States of America are so uncomfortable with coming out to their parents or family about their religious or personal practice preferences because of the fear that they would be ejected from homes, lives, etc. Or others who are going through court systems about things that are not relevant to religious preferences, and having theirs brought up as a sign of their character but yet other religions or other practices are NOT brought us as a mechanism to destroy a person's credibility. This is a very SERIOUS conversation that we need to discuss.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-03-19 00:00:00 Wathab Haj I haven't read too much about Wicca, but I think it's a very sensible, unauthoritative and gentle religion. I like the connection with nature, individuality and the main principle of doing whatever you like as long as you're not causing harm. Wicca is emphatically equal, but perhaps a little pointlessly (binary) gendered. I don't believe in magic or the supernatural in the same way Wiccans seem to do, but I could imagine performing a ritual or a spell as a symbolic tool to help myself orientate towards a goal or provide a sense of cleansing. The only change it could provide would be within myself and therefore in my actions, perhaps in my environment too. I have understood some pagans view their magic in a similar, realistic manner, but at least this book was supporting the idea of there being more unpredictable, external spiritual forces at play. I do however think this book is quite sensible and responsible about magic when instructing people to not do love spells and to still take their cancer treatment. This book was very shallow; calling it a "complete introduction" as the title does seems silly. Perhaps it is targeted for younger readers or just attempts to be super accessible, but I felt somewhat underestimated especially when the author kept parenting me about remembering to put candles out. I feel like there was very little content altogether, and probably my interest would have been more oriented towards theoretical beliefs than practical instructions for rituals, especially when those were quite repetitive and often obvious (along the lines of "garlic is good for you although it smells bad"). Extra minus for mentioning homeopathy as a legit alternative medication; seems like I'm much more tolerant about believing in healing with magic than in water faking to be medicine. If one must practice religion, Wicca seems like a great choice. If that someone was me, I'd get a better guide.